Expressed Appearance vs SimDNA...Technical Help Needed

[IcemanSimmer]

Background Information:

I started a new family recently (male + female) but for the first time ever, I decided to use custom created sims which I had grabbed from MTS2. These sims included custom skin, eyes, hair, etc. Within the game they looked fantastic. A couple of days ago, I got the female pregnant. When she gave birth, my horror story started. The male baby had eye shadow, pink lipstick and 4 eyebrows!!! Something was definitely not right here. To test what might be going on, I used Insimenator to make the female pregnant, give immidiate birth, and then age the offspring to adulthood. In all six tests, the resulting offspring was a mess. After further research, I realized the offending culprit were the custom skin packages, especially the female's. Her skin package had eyebrows, eyeshadow, and lipstick "embedded" into it. I have attached to this post the skin image which I extrated using SimPE.

Now I was in a dilema. I wanted the two custom sims to retain all their custom features but not be able to pass them on to their offsprings. I spent quite a few hours researching the issue of Sim DNA here on MATY and on MTS2. From what I had gathered, a sim's expressed appearance, as shown within the game, is stored in "Age Data" while what is passed to their offspring is stored in "Sim DNA". Using SimPE, I left the "Age Data" untouched but altered their "Sim DNA" to remove all reference to custom features and replace them with default Maxis values.

For the male, I set the eye color to 32dee745-b6ce-419f-9e86-ae93802d2682 (brown), skintone to 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 (light), hair color to 00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 (brown).

For the female, eyes are e43f3360-3a08-4755-8b83-a0d37a6c424b (light blue), skintone is 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 (light), hair color is 00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 (blonde).

Once these changes were in place, I fired up the game and immidiately noticed that my two sims looked distinctly "bland" and lost all their "vibrance". A closer look at the female showed that she no longer had eyebrows, lipstick, or eyeshadow. It was quite clear that the game was no longer using their custom skin. It seems changing their "Sim DNA" has also changed their expressed appearance (which is completly opposite to what I had researched).

Since I was already in the game, I decided to do some gene testing on my altered sims to see what the results would be. Using Insim again, I did 10 test cases. In all 10 cases, the resulting offspring had default Maxis features which is great.

Now for my questions...

Question #1: Is it possible to have the parent sims use custom features but not pass them to their offspring? If it can be done, how since my method resulted in the parents losing "customness" yet having offspring the way I want them.

Question #2: In my 2nd Insim test, all 10 offsprings had brown hair / brown eyes (inherited from the father). None of them had blonde hair / blue eyes. Looking at the 10 DNA profiles, all had brown / brown as dominant and blonde / blue as reccessive. Do certain colors have a higher genetic probabilty ie. brown hair > blonde hair and brown eyes > blue eyes?

Question #3: Under "Sim DNA" there is something called "Facial Features". This determines what characteristics can be passed down like mouth, chin, cheek, etc. Does anyone have a complete listing of all the parameters for this field? This is handy so that certain unwanted features don't get passed down the genetic line.

My apologies for the rather long post here but I feel the more info I give, the better the advice I will receive.

Thanks in advance.

[J. M. Pescado]

Question #1: Is it possible to have the parent sims use custom features but not pass them to their offspring? If it can be done, how since my method resulted in the parents losing "customness" yet having offspring the way I want them.

Changing eye or hair genetics has no effect on the sim's current appearance. Changing the skintone line takes effect immediately. Custom skins are made of 100% pure evil.

Question #2: In my 2nd Insim test, all 10 offsprings had brown hair / brown eyes (inherited from the father). None of them had blonde hair / blue eyes. Looking at the 10 DNA profiles, all had brown / brown as dominant and blonde / blue as reccessive. Do certain colors have a higher genetic probabilty ie. brown hair > blonde hair and brown eyes > blue eyes?

Like in real life, some genetic attributes are "recessive". Recessive attributes will be carried by sims that do not actually express them and may reappear in grandchildren.

Question #3: Under "Sim DNA" there is something called "Facial Features". This determines what characteristics can be passed down like mouth, chin, cheek, etc. Does anyone have a complete listing of all the parameters for this field? This is handy so that certain unwanted features don't get passed down the genetic line.

Doesn't work that way. The unwanted features still have a chance of passing on, and the only way to make sure this does not happen is to generate your intended spawn in a CAS test and then replace the LXNR manually. This is most likely beyond your ability to do.

[Dea]

I always create a sim with a Maxis hairstyle or custom hairstyle that is properly binned. If I want a sim to have a custom binned hairstyle I change it later.  Otherwise everyone in the family for a couple of generations will have the same hairstyle. 

You can change custom hair, skin, and eyes to act more Maxis-like with Simpe or Wardrobe Wrangler. A link to Wardrobe Wrangler is a couple or so threads down.

[Strangel]

Otherwise everyone in the family for a couple of generations will have the same hairstyle.

I learned that one the hard way.. lol I was new to Sims. This was before hair binning became a big deal, so you generally had Maxis Black, Maxis Brown, Maxis Red, Maxis Blonde, Custom Content. I made a female CAS with a CC hair, and now god knows how many generations later, those genes are floating in countless families. I wish there were a simple way to do a "search & destroy/replace" function in SimPE, but if I wanted to kill it off, I'd have to root through just about every sim's profile to see who'd gotten the genes. So.. I just ignore it.

[IcemanSimmer]

Thanks for the quick reply JM

Changing eye or hair genetics has no effect on the sim's current appearance. Changing the skintone line takes effect immediately.

I find it rather odd that EAxis would make eyes and hair two separate fields, yet skintone is essentially one field no mater what you change. This explains why my two sims lost their custom skintones.

Custom skins are made of 100% pure evil.

I completely agree with you here. I curse the two creators of these sims for designing such an abomination with absolutely no forsight what-so-ever that the player may actually what to spawn offsprings. My two sims are now, for all intent and purposes, neutered and spayed with no possibilty of reproducing offsprings.

My options are now bolied down to two possibilities. I can either run them both through Sim Surgery and completely change their appearance to all default Maxis features or I can remove all reference to custom features in "Age Data" and then from within the game, use makeup to try and get them to look as close as possible to the original.

Like in real life, some genetic attributes are "recessive". Recessive attributes will be carried by sims that do not actually express them and may reappear in grandchildren.

If I were to set the male "Sim DNA" to brown/brown dominant, blonde/blue recessive (with the female "Sim DNA" the exact oppsite), would the probablity be closer to 50/50 now?

Doesn't work that way. The unwanted features still have a chance of passing on, and the only way to make sure this does not happen is to generate your intended spawn in a CAS test and then replace the LXNR manually. This is most likely beyond your ability to do.

Probably wouldn't be too hard to do this but I have already spent time on this DNA issue that I would rather spend playing the game

[IcemanSimmer]

I always create a sim with a Maxis hairstyle or custom hairstyle that is properly binned. If I want a sim to have a custom binned hairstyle I change it later.  Otherwise everyone in the family for a couple of generations will have the same hairstyle. 

You can change custom hair, skin, and eyes to act more Maxis-like with Simpe or Wardrobe Wrangler. A link to Wardrobe Wrangler is a couple or so threads down.

After researching the whole Sim DNA issue, one of the first things I did was correctly color bin all CC hair and eyes I have. As for CC skin, having gone through what I am witnessing now, I don't want to touch another one unless I am absolutely certain it was created properly and won't f**k with the genetic line.

[J. M. Pescado]

If I were to set the male "Sim DNA" to brown/brown dominant, blonde/blue recessive (with the female "Sim DNA" the exact oppsite), would the probablity be closer to 50/50 now?

I am not here to repeat science class for you. Maybe you should have paid more attention when they covered Mendelian genetics in class. Suffice it to say that what you propose is definitely DOING IT WRONG.

After researching the whole Sim DNA issue, one of the first things I did was correctly color bin all CC hair and eyes I have. As for CC skin, having gone through what I am witnessing now, I don't want to touch another one unless I am absolutely certain it was created properly and won't f**k with the genetic line.

CC eyes are right up there with CC skins for being MADE OF PURE EVIL. CC hair can be binned correctly, but you cannot "bin" eyes. They are MADE OF EVIL, like skins, and you should use only default replacements.

[ingeli]

I change eye DNA with SimEnhancer regularly, and it works well, takes effect also on appearance. I also geneticized my custom eyes with Wardrobe Wrangler, and it seems to be working as intended.

[IcemanSimmer]

I am not here to repeat science class for you. Maybe you should have paid more attention when they covered Mendelian genetics in class. Suffice it to say that what you propose is definitely DOING IT WRONG.

I graduated from Uni almost 20 years ago with double majors in Biology and Comp Sci so, no offense intended, I know more about Mendel's Laws than you do. I should have worded my question better. What I am interested in knowing is, using my example, how does the game itself intrept Mendel's Laws. The game itself does not neccessarily equate itself to real life and I have no idea how EAxis coded the game to refelct genetics.

Also, one of my assumptions of the game is based on this post,

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,2966.msg86361.html#msg86361

"Actually Maxis had it right, if simplified.  On order of dominance it goes Black>Brown>Blond>Red."

Accroding to this poster, and my own in-game testing, there seems to be some color bias. I'm essentially trying to see if there is a way to level the playing field to remove the bias by altering the combinations in "Sim DNA".

[J. M. Pescado]

"Actually Maxis had it right, if simplified.  On order of dominance it goes Black>Brown>Blond>Red."

The way it works in-game is that if a sim inherits a "dominant" characteric, he expresses that characteristic. If a sim inherits two DIFFERENT dominant characteristics, one is randomly chosen. The same applies to two inherited recessive characteristics. If a sim inherits a dominant and a recessive characteristic, the usual rules apply.

Accroding to this poster, and my own in-game testing, there seems to be some color bias. I'm essentially trying to see if there is a way to level the playing field to remove the bias by altering the combinations in "Sim DNA".

I have no idea what you woud call a "color bias". There is only the simple Mendelian model above.

If I were to set the male "Sim DNA" to brown/brown dominant, blonde/blue recessive (with the female "Sim DNA" the exact oppsite), would the probablity be closer to 50/50 now?

Well, setting the female Sim DNA to "the exact opposite" in this situation would produce an illegal genetic combination, as for her to express recessive traits, she would need to have only recessive traits in the first place. Changing the male as such alone would be enough to produce a 50/50 expressed ratio without creating an illegal genotype-phenotype combination.

[IcemanSimmer]

JM...your last post had the answers I was looking for Thank you very much for taking the time to help me understand how the game interprets genetics.

To those of you reading this thread, please post your experiences with genetics in-game (especially involving CC). I, along with many others I'm sure, would like to know more so we don't inadvertantly walk straight into a disaster like I did with my two custom sims.

[Lyra]

The easy answer to the CC skin thing is to never download Sims with photoskinned skin. I'd put a fair amount of money on most of the creators of such skin do not design their skins with breeding in mind, only to make their celebrity or whatever look like the person they're based off.

Photoskinned skins are the devil's work.

[Sleepycat]

IcemanSimmer, you may find the files I uploaded handy
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,2966.msg244291.html#msg244291

I used to change recessive lines in SimPE to give my sims a chance at having kids with blond or red hair (most of my male sims have black hair), now I just use those hacked files. same for eye color. 

as for custom skintones, I'd suggest checking out how they look on both males & females (toddlers-elders) in Bodyshop or CAS before ever using them on a sim in-game. If you like them then you can fix them so they fit in where you want them genetically instead of leaving them custom(dominant).

[Lord Darcy]

I used to breed Sims only with default skintones/eyes, and used custom skin only for townies/NPCs that I don't ever plan to breed. Then, I realized that I would never take out Enayla's skintones anyway, so I just went ahead to breed Sims with them. I'm using geneticized version of her skintones and eyes, which can be found in Peasantry. I also geneticized a couple of other custom skintones that I can't part with.

I never download Photoskinned skintones. As I'm sick of Hollywood celebrities in real life, I have no desire to populate my Simhood with them.

[IcemanSimmer]

IcemanSimmer, you may find the files I uploaded handy
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,2966.msg244291.html#msg244291

During my research of this DNA issue, I downloaded your files but haven't used them as yet. Will try them out as soon as I finish this post

I used to change recessive lines in SimPE to give my sims a chance at having kids with blond or red hair (most of my male sims have black hair), now I just use those hacked files. same for eye color.

Normally if you pair up a black haired sim with a blond, their kids will all have black hair.

As you had read in my previous posts in this thread, its quite obvious the game has a bias towards darker colors. In your case, black haired coupled with blonde haired led to always black haired. In my case, brown + blonde always had brown hair. A couple of hours ago, I redid my Insim test 25 times. All 25 offsprings had brown hair and brown hairs. This is why, just like you, I asked if changing the recessive line would make any difference in influencing the outcome of the genes.

Quoting El Presidente in an earlier post to this thread:

"If a sim inherits two DIFFERENT dominant characteristics, one is randomly chosen."

Father has dominant brown, mother has dominant blonde, the offspring should have a 50/50 probabilty of being either brown or blonde. But this is clearly not what is happening in the game and what throughly confused me and one of the reasons I started this thread.

as for custom skintones, I'd suggest checking out how they look on both males & females (toddlers-elders) in Bodyshop or CAS before ever using them on a sim in-game. If you like them then you can fix them so they fit in where you want them genetically instead of leaving them custom(dominant).

As I mentioned in my 1st post, this was the very first time I touched custom skins. Over the past 4 years of playing TS2, I only use maxis defaults. Next time I use CC skins, you can bet your life I will test the f**k out of it to make sure I don't ever experience this again

EDIT: I just ran 11 Insim pregnancy tests using SleepyCat's genetic hack. Of the 4 possible genetic combos, I saw brown/brown 3x, brown/blue 3x, blonde/brown 2x, blonde/blue 3x. Excellent hack!!!

[Simsample]

Quoting El Presidente in an earlier post to this thread:

"If a sim inherits two DIFFERENT dominant characteristics, one is randomly chosen."

Father has dominant brown, mother has dominant blonde, the offspring should have a 50/50 probabilty of being either brown or blonde. But this is clearly not what is happening in the game and what throughly confused me and one of the reasons I started this thread.

No, blonde is always recessive. The only way you'd get a child of those parents to have a blonde kid was if the brown haired parent had a recessive red or blonde gene, and passed that onto the kid instead of the brown gene.

[IcemanSimmer]

No, blonde is always recessive. The only way you'd get a child of those parents to have a blonde kid was if the brown haired parent had a recessive red or blonde gene, and passed that onto the kid instead of the brown gene.

Because blonde is considered recessive, you will never see a blonde child as long as the other sim has a black or brown dominant gene (this is the "color bias" I mentioned earlier). Blonde hair will start appearing from the grandchildren onwards since their parents have the blonde recessive. This is why I asked earlier if adding blonde to the sim dna recessive line would possibly alter the outcome.

All this is rather moot now since I can use SleepyCat's hack instead of messing around with the sim dna just to get some expressed appearance diversity.

[Zazazu]

No, blonde is always recessive. The only way you'd get a child of those parents to have a blonde kid was if the brown haired parent had a recessive red or blonde gene, and passed that onto the kid instead of the brown gene.

Because blonde is considered recessive, you will never see a blonde child as long as the other sim has a black or brown dominant gene (this is the "color bias" I mentioned earlier). Blonde hair will start appearing from the grandchildren onwards since their parents have the blonde recessive. This is why I asked earlier if adding blonde to the sim dna recessive line would possibly alter the outcome.

Basically making the parents like a second gen heterogenous rather than a first gen homogenous? Yeah, of course that would work. However, I think it's more enjoyable to do this through breeding rather than through tinkering. As a general rule; obviously, if you are having quadrobrowed spawn that's a problem.

As for custom skins/eyes issues, I've never had them. For eyes, I knew they were dominant if they were custom, until I figured out read how to edit them here. Now my 20 or so additional eye colors are set on a dominant-recessive 0-3 scale, though not townified. For skins, I use Enayla's, and she doesn't suck. No freaky babies. The ones I use are geneticized, from Peasantry here. I think I also have a couple of Heleane skins floating about as well, but have had no issues with them.

[IcemanSimmer]

Basically making the parents like a second gen heterogenous rather than a first gen homogenous? Yeah, of course that would work.

YES!!! Exactly the point I was trying to make. Thanks to all of you, I know fully understand what is going on. I had no idea that the lighter colors were considered recessive within the game and thus why every offspring had the darker colors.

However, I think it's more enjoyable to do this through breeding rather than through tinkering.

For me, always spawning dark haired / dark eyed offspring got old very fast. I get bored rather quickly looking at the same sim features all the time and regularly "Change Appearance" to alter their hair styles, hair colors, and eye colors even though it won't be passed down genetically.

For skins, I use Enayla's, and she doesn't suck. No freaky babies. The ones I use are geneticized, from Peasantry here.

I've seen the name Enayla mentioned in numerous threads here on MATY and almost all of them speak very highly of her work. I've seen her non-geneticized eyes and skins at MTS2 but have never personally used them.

I searched through Peasantry and I found a thread where dewshine geneticized her stuff.

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,7230.0.html

Just to be absolutely sure, is that the correct thread you and LordDarcy mentioned? Some of her eyes look fantastic and would work well with my many sims.

[Zazazu]

Yup, those are the ones I use. I also use a set of her eyes as defaults plus her stuff makes up the bulk of the extra geneticized custom eyes I have.

Dark/dark does get boring, for sure. Usually, by the third generation, I have all four hair colors popping up as I either start with a dominant and breed in recessive or start recessive and breed in dominant, same with eyes though those tend to take me longer. Then when the decision comes as to who gets to spawn and who doesn't, those carrying recessive genes or custom geneticized recessives are automatically in the pool. I kind of wish we could get realistic levels of genetics (8-part hair genes, random brown eyed sims never producing the proteins and staying blue-eyed, etc) but what can you do? Sometimes I pick a golden brown style for the child of a brown/blonde pairing for realism.

[IcemanSimmer]

What you are suggesting is that hair genetics mimick how skin genetics is done. Hair would be allocated gradients of 0.1 to 0.9. If a sim with 0.3 mates with a sim having 0.6, the resulting offspring would have a gradient between 0.3 and 0.6. Not a crazy idea since it makes alot of sense especially if the parents have gradients close to each other. If one parent is 0.1 and the other is 0.9, then the offspring will have all the possibilities (which wouldn't be too realistic unless the game is smart enough to realize the large discrepency). Maybe EAxis will look into it for TS3 (although I wouldn't hold my breath for that to happen 

[IcemanSimmer]

I've run into an unrelated problem and thought I would ask for help in this thread.

Before messing with all the DNA, I made a backup of my saved game. I restored this backup and when I fired up the game, the female was no longer at work but at home. Her car is now trapped in some temporal nexus. I tried using the awesome lot degugger to fix her work state but her car is still missing. I tried fast forwarding time and reissuing the fix state but no luck. Each day the carpool comes to pick her up.

Anyone know how I can get her car back to the home lot?

[J. M. Pescado]

I have never been able to properly fix or reproduce the state of a car being permanently lost off lot. You could try forcing errors on it using the Lot Debugger's Force Errors command.

[IcemanSimmer]

WOOHOO!!! "Force Errors...On All" did the trick!!!

Thanks!!!